THREE DAYS BEFORE


The glare from the sea is pure white, too blinding to see any distance from the back door, even with my hand stretched above my eyes. All I can do is scream loudly enough to reach across the lawn.

“Charlie?!”

Everybody on the island can probably hear me. How undignified. How American.

Emma starts hollering in imitation. “Chaaaaarlieeee!”

Oh, that voice of hers—lovely, adorable, way too much for me right now. The pitch is so high, my brain feels like it’ll burst.

I crouch, squinting, and idly tickle her to get her to stop, but she keeps trying to screech again between fits of giggles. I draw her in, kiss one sticky cheek, and glance up past her tangled curls, worry needling me.

A drifting cloud lessens the glare, but I still don’t see Charlie. He’d have come at the sound of his name if he were safe and within earshot. He does like to wander but never far, and he always comes back. He stays in orbit.

Sally is already pulling the enormous, brocaded living room drapes shut when I come through, as if we were heading out for six months instead of a few days’ break. Emma runs into the living room, and Sally startles, hands in the air, bracing for the three-foot-tall tackle.

I picture our housekeeper as a linebacker and stifle a smirk. She’d probably be good at it.

“John Ashford’s around the side, milady,” Sally says, ignoring Emma’s attempts to scale her leg. “He thought you might like the use of his pickup truck to get down to the harbor.”

She always says pickup truck like it’s a foreign delicacy.

I smile. “Awesome, that’ll be helpful.”

I didn’t flinch when I heard milady this time. Sally hardly says it anymore. It slips out when she’s busy. It has the ring of a joke, like calling Charlie “Esquire” or Emma “Dr. Treadway” when she’s playing checkup with her dolls.

How am I a milady? How is anyone in this day and age?

“Have you seen Charlie?” I ask.

Sally frowns, thinking. “Isn’t he at the landing with Lord Treadway?”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure I saw them go off together.” She wipes her hands on her trousers. “Do you want me to have a look around?”

“No, no. It’s fine, you’re busy enough as it is.” I smile another goodbye, but my heart’s still pounding like there’s something wrong.

It’s fine, he’s fine, he’s with his dad, calm the hell down, Nina.

Outside, John Ashford’s green pickup is idling on the drive, the driver himself nowhere to be seen.

“John Ashford,” not just “John.” Sally uses his full name because on an island with a population of less than two hundred, there are somehow seven Johns to differentiate between. Five of them have been off fighting for the past four years, but John Ashford remains John Ashford, and ancient John Jones is still John Jones. You’d think new parents would get it together among themselves to vary the names they give their babies, but that’s not the way of things here, and if I’ve learned anything in the past seven years on Lute, it’s that “the way of things” likes to stay put. Even in wartime. Everywhere around us, life’s been upended, but here, it’s only seemed to shift.

I wonder if things are still the same in Florida. Strip malls extending their reach like concrete kudzu, theme parks whirling, playgrounds flash-drying in the summer sun. I feel a little pain behind one eye at the thought of my childhood home, flat and glaring, and then blink it away as I reach for my daughter.

I hold Emma back from the growl of the running engine, and then John Ashford’s head pops up past the hood.

“Seen this one before?” He’s got his hand out low, careful. He turns to wink at Emma. “This is a proper mini-beast. Fancy saying hello?”

She’s flying past me before I can think to grab her. At the sight of whatever John’s holding, she goes very still, a near-silent oh falling from her mouth. My placid sorry, I’ll handle her smile becomes a real one when I lean over John’s hand too and see a glossy green beetle with a red face.

“Not invasive?” I ask quietly.

“Nah, I should think not. Looks like a bloody-nosed beetle to me, as Lute as they come.” He grins, and his face explodes with creases. “I’m not using profanity in front of your daughter, Lady Treadway, that’s honestly what they’re called. I’ll snap a picture and find out for sure. That’s what they’re paying me for, after all.”

“Is that what they’re paying you for?” I grin back. “Not the paperwork and repairs and cataloging and protecting endangered birds and—?”

“Oh, you stop. There are far worse jobs.” The light in his eyes dims a little.

This is the way we reference the war, in asides, quiet gratitude, and humility, sharing postcards and emails we’ve gotten from those off fighting, well-tended vegetable gardens, and meticulous ration books. Never directly. But maybe that’s just how people behave around me because of my American accent, the voice of the enemy. Don’t mention the war.

Or maybe it’s more that we can’t face the full reality of it, the images we get in the news—all those occupied countries, cities gone dark in military curfew or reduced to rubble, bloated bodies washing up on the shores of practically every continent, refugee camps growing and burning down and growing again, rows upon rows of draped soldiers ready for sorting and sending home.


Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Thorne